The present invention relates to a wireless communication system, apparatus, and method to communicate using a plurality of communication slots in time division multiple access technique.
In conventional time division multiple access communication in a wired network using an ISDN network, a communication apparatus can perform communication using two communication slots (e.g., B1 and B2 channels).
However, in time division multiple access communication using radio channels, such as a personal handyphone system (PHS) and a personal digital cellular (PDC), when a communication apparatus communicates with another communication apparatus, the communication is performed using only one of a plurality of communication slots of a communication frame. Communication using two or more communication slots has not been performed.
Thus, in the conventional wireless time division multiple access communication, communication is performed using only one communication slot; accordingly, communications traffic between two radio communication apparatuses is limited to the channel capacitance of one communication slot (e.g., 32 kbps in PHS). Therefore, the conventional radio communication apparatus is not suitable for transmitting non-audio data, for instance, which is more frequently transmitted than before.
Further, if communication using two or more communication slots in time division multiple access technique via radio channels is tried, difficulties occur, since wireless communication is easily interfered by, e.g., other wireless communication and electromagnetic wave generated by electrical appliance, compared to wired communication. Therefore, when wireless communication is performed using, e.g., two communication slots, either or both of the channels would be interfered frequently, which may interrupt the communication.